Police raided Caterer’s Raines Avenue home on November 12 2015 and found four plants under ‘a purpose-made growing tent’, along with a hydroponic set-up in her loft, said prosecutor Daniel Pietryka.

He said: “She told police she was growing the cannabis to sell before Christmas and then that it was only for personal use.”

But Bill Soughton, defending, said the growing set-up consisted of a ‘bit of foil and one lamp’ and that it was ‘very amateurish’.

Showing magistrates a picture of the plants, he said: “They had been up there for a couple of months. You can see how high they grew. It doesn’t look like there would be any prospect of any crop coming from them she was doing it so poorly.”

The court heard that Caterer had a number of convictions relating to class A drugs and had received a ‘substantial sentence’ in 2004.

Mr Soughton said she was still using ‘a little bit’ of heroin and had been using the methadone substitute for seven years. Her children, aged three and five, had been taken into care after her ex-partner took them with him while he was shoplifting. She had also been diagnosed with mental health problems.

She had recently begun smoking cannabis, Mr Soughton said, because it helped her to calm down.

Sentencing was adjourned until Wednesday January 13 for probation reports.